OPENING SEGMENT- fine
Kurt Angle comes out to get the hometown pop and also to run down the show: We’re getting Braun vs. Joe vs. Roman, Big Cass vs. Big Show, and Jason Jordan on Miz TV. Kurt then started to cut a nice little promo about today being the anniversary of the day the he won an Olympic gold medal with a broken freakin’ neck and thanking the fans for supporting him etc. etc.
Then Brock Lesnar and Paul Heyman showed up. Heyman claims that having Brock defend the Universal Title in a Fatal Four-Way at SummerSlam against Braun, Roman, and Joe is a plan designed to ensure that Brock loses the belt. He claims that these orders are coming from higher up the food chain than Kurt himself. Heyman then declares that if Brock loses the Universal Title at SummerSlam, he will leave WWE. My question is why Paul would think that they have any particular interest in making sure that Brock loses the belt.

THE HARDY BOYZ vs. LUKE GALLOWS & KARL ANDERSON- 6.5/10
The Revival were on commentary for this match. The Hardys won clean, so what looked like a storyline about a losing streak turns out to just be the usual 50-50.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- The Hardys and Revival decided to have a brawl on the ramp so they did. Gallows & Anderson ran in to also attack the Hardy Boyz but the Hardys still won the brawl. Not sure how this really helps advance any storylines that aren’t the same generic “these teams don’t like each other” that we’ve been getting forever in the tag team division.

RENEE YOUNG INTERVIEWS DEAN AMBROSE- good
No wonder she’s smiling so much. Seth also showed up. Just based on the sound, I think that, between the two of them showing up, the only woman in the building who didn’t squeal in delight was Renee, and that’s just because she’s a f*cking professional. The gist of this is that no matter how well last week went, Dean isn’t willing to trust Seth yet.

SETH ROLLINS BUMPS INTO SHEAMUS & CESARO BACKSTAGE- They mock him because Dean doesn’t trust him. Then Seth was given some completely atrocious crap to s ay in order to challenge one of them to a match tonight. Sheamus accepted.

TONY NESE, ARIYA DAIVARI, & TJ PERKINS vs. RICH SWANN, CEDRIC ALEXANDER, & AKIRA TOZAWA (w/Titus O’Neil)- 6.5/10
Wow. I totally forgot that at least half of the men in this match were WWE employees. Likely knowing that this will be the only TV time they get for months, Cedric and Nese start off with one of those fast-paced, athletic sequences that reminds you of why you thought this Cruiserweight Division thing might have been a good idea at first. On the other end of the spectrum we have Ariya Daivari, who Cole tells us now wants to be known as “The Sheik of the Cruiserweights.” Tozawa’s arm is still heavily taped up due to his injury. It immediately gets targeted by the heels. He resists Titus’ efforts to convince him to throw in the towel as we head to a commercial.
This match actually got time, was action-packed, totally clean, and the right guy won. For one night, the Cruiswerweight Division that we all wanted to see was back.

MIZ TV WITH SPECIAL GUEST JASON JORDAN- good stuff.

ROMAN REIGNS VIDEO PACKAGE & PROMO TO HYPE UP THE MAIN EVENT- great (aside from the part where he bragged about attempting to commit a murder.

SETH ROLLINS vs. SHEAMUS (w/Cesaro)- 6.75/10
They’ve added someone shouting “BURN IT DOWN!” into Seth’s music. He’s also got a shirt that says “burn it down.” This is obviously a reference to the video game commercial, right? So wouldn’t that make the “it” in this case WWE Headquarters?
They had a very good match. I was just happy we got a clean finish and a post-match attack rather than a DQ to set up the same situation. Ambrose eventually came out to try to make the save, but they definitely made you wait for it just enough to think that he wasn’t coming. Dean was overwhelmed rather quickly, just like Seth was. The unspoken idea here was that if Dean hadn’t waited so long to make the save, this could have been a 2-on-2 fight instead of two 2-on-1 fights.

SAMOA VIDEO PACKAGE & PROMO TO HYPE UP THE MAIN EVENT- GREAT!

BRAY WYATT PROMO- good, but went on too long.
Oh great. Now Finn Balor has magic, too. He makes Bray look dumb by beating him up despite giving Bray an advantage. I won’t deny that this was good, but I absolutely despised the magical bullsh*t set-up.

BRAUN STROWMAN VIDEO PACKAGE & PROMO TO HYPE UP THE MAIN EVENT- great!
He starts off by telling us “I’m not like most men.” I choose to interpret this as a sign that WWE is building towards him hooking up with “I’m not like most girls” Nia Jax, just as Botched Spot predicted:http://botchedspot.com/blog/comic/love-and-jobbers/

ROMAN REIGNS vs. SAMOA JOE vs. BRAUN STROWMAN- 8/10
Just in case you weren’t sure if this would end in Brock running in and destroying everyone, they’re inexplicably booking this at the top of the third hour and not in the main event spot.
Or not. Wow. Another clean finish!
That being said, they chose the wrong version of this clean finish. This should have been Joe choking Roman out. By having Roman pin Joe you needlessly throw away the story that Roman has never been able to beat Joe. Thinking with a WWE “WE MUST PUSH ROMAN AS THE BABYFACE” mindset, here is what I would do:
Joe chokes Roman out here, but Roman pins Braun at SummerSlam to win the title. Instead of leaving, Brock would go after Braun for costing him the title (Heyman says that Brock is confident that he can beat whoever the champion happens to be at any given time in a one-on-one match, so he wants to take Braun out first), and meanwhile you have Joe cut a promo pointing out that Roman has never beaten him and that he choked Roman out in this match here so Joe becomes your #1 contender after SummerSlam.
At the September PPV Brock and Braun would have an ultra-grueling match that Brock would win cleanly, but it would be close, and both guys would disappear for a bit afterwards. Anywhere else in the world Joe would just beat Roman clean to win the title, but because this is WWE and we know how they are about stuff like that, you could extend it for another month by doing a finish where Joe technically gets the win but Roman retains the belt. I think the best way to do this would be some deal where Joe is getting frustrated that he can’t put Roman down so he hits him with a chair but the referee is down so he doesn’t see it, but he does see it when Roman retaliates with one of his own for the DQ (obviously something else would be the main event, but this would be the semi-main).
This would lead to a title match on Raw where they braw around forever, and eventually it is decided that these two must face off in Hell in a Cell. Again, for any other company in the world Joe would just win clean, but this is WWE so they’d probably want to have Braun make his big return by ripping the cell door off to interfere and cost Roman the match. You can do some big angle out of this, leading Roman and Braun settling their issues once and for all at Survivor Series in a Last Man Standing Match which Roman would win. For here you would have Joe running around destroying everyone cleanly as the unstoppable monster champion, while Roman would be rebuilt and would eventually finally defeat Joe to win the title back at WrestleMania.

BIG SHOW & ENZO BACKSTAGE- fine

THE DRIFTER INSULTS PITTSBURGH- I don’t get it… did the fans really not see where this was going from the moment he mentioned that he was born in Pittsburgh?

“THE DRIFTER” ELIAS SAMPSON vs. KALISTO- 4.5/10

CHARLY CARUSO INTERVIEWS ALEXA BLISS!- Excellent. She totally denies that getting counted out at Great Balls of Fire was intentional, blows Bayley off as a challenger by reminding us how Alexa constantly defeated and humiliated her this spring, tried to sew dissension between Bayley and Sasha, and also established a reason for why Sasha Banks isn’t in the building tonight (she is doing a promotional tour for WWE somewhere else), which will almost certainly be relevant in the Bayley vs. Nia Jax match Alexa us informed us of.

ROLLINS & AMBROSE BACKSTAGE- Seth thanks Dean for helping him tonight. Dean claims that Seth had a good idea that this sort of thing would happen when he challenged one of the tag champs to a match, knowing that if Dean didn’t come out he would look like an asshole. Dean came off as kind of paranoid, but I thought it worked.

NIA JAX vs. BAYLEY- 3/10
Nia was beating Bayley up. Alexa tried to attack Bayley from behind but Bayley thwarted it, then dodged an attack from Nia and won by count-out. Then Bayley also foiled Alexa’s post-match attack. If you’re going to do a DQ this is the place to do it. A big beat-down here would have gotten lots of heat, done a better job of pushing the idea that Bayley won’t be at 100% going into SummerSlam, and also sets up well for the possibility of a finish at SummerSlam where Sasha comes out to try to help Bayley (like she did against Charlotte, because we have now shown Bayley once again being unable to deal with a two-on-one situation) but this time it backfires and allows Alexa to beat Bayley, leading to the Sasha vs. Bayley feud that way without the title on the line (your title program would presumably be Alexa vs. Nia).

RENEE YOUNG INTERVIEWS COLIN CASSADY – fine, except that he seems to think that “miscreant” and “excrement” are the same word.

COLIN CASSADY vs. BIG SHOW (w/Enzo Amore)- 1.5/10
Enzo is now flat out saying that he is bringing someone else to fight his battles for him. They did some stuff. Cass worked on Show’s knee. Enzo ran in for the DQ. Cass kicked his ass, then Big Show laid Cass out with a “desperation Knockout Punch” as he went down himself as well. I was so shocked at the terrible booking here that I almost didn’t have enough shock left in me to register when Michael Cole said that this was the end of the show. Why the f*ck would this be your main event instead of the three-way with a clean finish?

Overall, this was a very good episode of Raw that went off the rails after Alexa’s promo. The first two and a half hours or so were pretty great, but everything after the aforementioned promo was bad.

BRAY WYATT PROMO- good, but went on too long.
Oh great. Now Finn Balor has magic, too. He makes Bray look dumb by beating him up despite giving Bray an advantage. I won’t deny that this was good, but I absolutely despised the magical bullsh*t set-up.

I'm a giant mark, but I totally lost it at this part lol. It's honestly the only thing in a while that's gotten me excited about anything Wyatt is in.